5 ms·

Ok, so let's say there is 350 km in an almost straight line. A great tunnel boring machine excavates around 20 meters per day in average (80 m on good days; nex

by flexie 9y ago

Ok, so let's say there is 350 km in an almost straight line. A great tunnel boring machine excavates around 20 meters per day in average (80 m on good days; next to nothing on other days). So that's 140 meters per week or 7 km per year. With 10 of those he could cover the distance in 5 years. For one tube. If he wants 2, 3 or 4 tubes, which would make sense on such busy stretch, he would need 2, 3 or 4 machines more. Musk claims the Boring Company will drill faster than traditional tunnel boring machines. If he could go twice as fast, he could do with half the machines. It's doable, I guess, but I think the regulatory obstacles, archeological excavations, etc would slow it all down more than the machines.

danielharan 9y ago
"The Boring Company's ambitions include reducing both the diameter of tunnels and increasing the speed of soft-soil boring machines to carve them. It wants to increase machine power and have them run on electricity instead of diesel, automate the process with fewer human operators, and tunnel continuously instead of erecting support structures. Noting that a snail is effectively 14 times faster than a soft-soil boring machine, the company says in bold that "our goal is to defeat a snail in a race." To highlight the point, it also links to a picture on Musk's Instagram of the company's mascot, a snail with a name and environs inspired by SpongeBob Squarepants." http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/infrastructure/news/a26565/elon-musks-boring-company-begins-to-explain-itself/ http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/infrastructure/ne...
DeBraid 9y ago
EDIT: refers more to cost, and not directly time. Musk claimed[1] existing tunnels are far too big/wide as they're over-engineered for safety + regulatory FUD. Boring plans to reduce tunnel diameter by half (from 28ft to 14), and then build a better machine to tunnel + support the walls simultaneously. Estimates would reduce costs by ~10x. [1]: https://youtu.be/zIwLWfaAg-8?t=3m10s https://youtu.be/zIwLWfaAg-8?t=3m10s
- pcl 9y ago
  I would imagine that cost and time are pretty interchangeable on a tunnel from DC to NYC, since you could simply add more boring machines all digging different sections of the tunnel.

by flexie 9y ago

danielharan 9y ago

"The Boring Company's ambitions include reducing both the diameter of tunnels and increasing the speed of soft-soil boring machines to carve them. It wants to increase machine power and have them run on electricity instead of diesel, automate the process with fewer human operators, and tunnel continuously instead of erecting support structures. Noting that a snail is effectively 14 times faster than a soft-soil boring machine, the company says in bold that "our goal is to defeat a snail in a race." To highlight the point, it also links to a picture on Musk's Instagram of the company's mascot, a snail with a name and environs inspired by SpongeBob Squarepants." http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/infrastructure/news/a26565/elon-musks-boring-company-begins-to-explain-itself/ http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/infrastructure/ne...

DeBraid 9y ago

EDIT: refers more to cost, and not directly time. Musk claimed[1] existing tunnels are far too big/wide as they're over-engineered for safety + regulatory FUD. Boring plans to reduce tunnel diameter by half (from 28ft to 14), and then build a better machine to tunnel + support the walls simultaneously. Estimates would reduce costs by ~10x. [1]: https://youtu.be/zIwLWfaAg-8?t=3m10s https://youtu.be/zIwLWfaAg-8?t=3m10s

pcl 9y ago
I would imagine that cost and time are pretty interchangeable on a tunnel from DC to NYC, since you could simply add more boring machines all digging different sections of the tunnel.